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C JISAR AUGUSTUS RODNEY, 



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' JUKE 27th, 1853. 



PUBLISHED BY ORDER OF THE GRAND LODGE. 



Printed by C. P. Johnson, No. 114 Market Street, 
Wilmington, Delaware. 



£"50' 



At the annual Grand Communication of the Grand Lodge of 
Delaware, in June, 5853, the following Resolution was adopted : 
On motion of Br. Allen W. Leslie, 
Resolved, That the thanks of this Grand Lodge be respectfully 
tendered to the M. W. Grand Master for his interesting and in- 
structive Address, and that it be printed with the proceedings of 
this Grand Lodge. 
A true copy, 

Attest, GEORGE W. CHAYTOR, 
Grand {Secretary. 
Grand Secretary's Office, Wilmington, Dec. 1st, 5853, 

f 



«# 



Brethren : 

Having filled for three years the office of Grand Mas- 
ter of the Grand Lodge of Delaware, and by its Constitution being 
now ineligible to this office, the relation in which I stand to you 
must soon be terminated. 

I thank you for the honor you have done me — much, very much 
exceeding my deserts — in thrice electing me Grand master of 
Masons in Delaware. 

If in the execution of this office I have erred, and it would be 
foolish as well as arrogant to assume I have not, I beg you to believe 
I have not done so wilfully. 

The year which has elapsed since I last addressed you has been 
distinguished by no occurrence of special interest in the Lodges 
within our jurisdiction, which have been working with diligence 
and unbroken harmony, and have added to their members by initia- 
tions. 

My official acts during this period have been unimportant, there- 
fore, without enumerating them, I will proceed, at once, to the sub- 
ject which 1 have chosen for my "Address" on the present occasion, 
a "Biographical Sketch of Caesar A. Rodney," which, delineated, it 
may be, with a feeble hand, is not irrelevant; for surely, the virtues 
our venerable institution teaches can be presented in no way better 
suited to win our attention, and enkindle our love for them and in- 
cite us to practice them, than as exemplified by an eminent bro- 
ther. 

C^SAR AUGUSTUS RODNEY, was born in Dover, in Kent 
County, in the State of Delaware, on the 4th day of January, 1772. 
He was the son of Colonel Thomas Rodney and Elizabeth Fisher. 
His family is of great antiquity in England. Sir Walter de Rodney, 



its founder, having come in the twelfth century, from Normandy, as 
a follower of the Empress Matilda, daughter of Henry the First, and 
having been distinguished in the war she waged with the usurper 
Stephen. His descendents were possessed of many manors, and were 
actors, and prominent ones, in the stormy periods through which 
they lived. But, at last, by divisions of its estates, in several genera- 
tions of the family, lavish expenditures, advances, to aid the royal' 
cause in the time of the great rebellion, and forfeitures, upon the 
success of the popular party, its wealth and importance were greatly 
diminished. Soon after the settlement of Pennsylvania, William 
Rodney, who had married Alice, daughter of Sir Thomas Caesar, 
an eminent London merchant, migrated to that province,and finally 
settled in Kent County, Delaware; where he took an active and 
prominent part in public affairs, and was the first Speaker of the first 
House of Assembly of the three lower counties on Delaware. He 
died in 1708, leaving eight children, and a large entailed estate, most 
of which, by the decease of nearly all of them, without issue, came 
to the youngest of his sons, Caesar, who was benevolent, unambitious 
and undistinguished. He married the daughter of the Reverend 
Thomas Crawford, the first missionary to Dover, Delaware, of the 
venerable " Society for propagating the Gospel in Foreign Parts," 
a pious, learned and diligent minister of the Church. Among the 
eight children of this marriage were Cfesar, the signer of the declar- 
ation of Independence, and Colonel Thomas Rodney.* I have been 
informed by an eminent gentleman, far advanced in life, formerly 
resident in Dover, Delaware, that in his youth, he well knew Thos. 
Rodney, — a grey-headed man — much respected — of small property 
— not a householder but living with his friends — reputed a man 
of extensive reading, and having good knowledge of law, though 
not a lawyer by profession — a writer of essays for newspapers, and 
somewhat excentric in his opinions— and that he was appointed by 
President Jefferson a Judge in the Territory of Mississippi, where 
he died, in that ofiice, having acquired considerable property .f — 
To Thomas Rodney was made the remarable communication by " 



* His daugbterLavinia wa3 ma/rried to- John Fisher, late Judge of the U. States 
District Court for the district of Delaware. 

y Biography of the Signers of the Declaration of Indtpendence, vol. 4, pp. 313, 
314, 315, 316, 317, 318. 



General Charles Lee '* that he was the author of Junius" Lee, with- 
great military talents, was vain, insatiably ambitious, and unscrupu- 
lous, and with some good qualities, very excentric. Soured by the 
disappointment of brilliant hopes, he became neglectful of the com 
mon decencies of life,and terminated his career, full of romantic inci- 
dents,in fierce misanthropy, almost like a beast of the jungle or for- 
rest in its lair. This statement may be found on pages 76 and 77 of 
the PreHminary Essay to the London edition of Junius of 1812,repub- 
lished in Philadelphia in 1813. That Lee made this statement to- 
Thomas Rodney is certain, but it has been proved a pure fiction by 
the comparison of his style and political opinions with those of Ju- 
nius, and his absence from England, when the "letters of Junius" 
were published, and that writer frequently communicating with 
Woodfall. 

Mr. Rodney was brought up by his uncle Caesar, who was pre- 
eminent among the patriots of our revolution for ardent attachment to 
the cause of his country. His talents, consecrated to the public 
weal, gave him- great influence in that august assembly, the con- 
tinental Congress, while the amenity of his manners and the playful- 
ness of his wit made him the darling of his friends.- From this ven- 
erable man, in whom the stern virtue of an old Roman was soft- 
ened by the heaven-born influences of our favored era, Mr. Rod- 
ney, doubtless, imbibed that admiration of our civil institutions which' 
distinguished him. His uncle made provision in his will for his 
education, which was completed in the university, of Pennsylvaniay 
where he graduated, with distinction, at an early age, in 1790, and 
soon after commenced the study of the law, in the office of Joseph 
B. McKean. ' The profession of his choice did not tempt his young 
ambition with the splendid incentives of the British Barrister, the 
princely revenue and the glittering coronet, but he adopted it from 
inclination, and by the advice of his friends, who considered him 
suited to it. He was admitted to the bar in 1793, and commenced 
the practice of the law in Wilmington, Delaware. His practice 
though he was discouraged by failure in his first effbrts,after a. limc^ 
became respectable, and then lucrative. If he was surpassed by 
some of his contemporaries in vigor and grasp and subtlety of in- 
tellect and profound erudition,they were in the first rank of the law- 
yers of their day. While he brought to the forum competent power 



as a dialectician, with extensive knowledge of legal principles 
and decisions, it was in addressing a jury that he excelled. Always 
fluent, he could be pathetic, or delight his hearers with declamation, 
adorned by figures, from his prolific fancy, or by facts, from 
his ample store of general knowledge. So simple and unaffected 
was he in dress, and address, so kindly, and benevolent, and 
good humored, that the Court, the jury, the bar, and the by- 
standers listened to him with favor, and were incUned to his side of 
the case. Old-fashioned lawyers sometimes thought he got out of 
bounds. Chief justice Read, when he quoted " Beccaria on Crimes 
and Punishments," stopped him, saying, **that book was no authority. 
in his court." Invective — that terrible weapon of the orator, be- 
neath which men of iron nerves cower, in dismay, and confusion, I 
will not say he could not wield, but I believe he never did wield it 

Seldom is the deep-read lawyer a polite scholar. Inured to 
grapple with sylogisms, and to chase subtleties through the labya- 
rinths of legal disquisition, he disdains to frolic with the muses. 
Mr. Rodney, wisely, thought that an argument would not be less 
conclusive because clothed in elegant diction, nor less clear because 
illustrated by metaphor, and though he must cite black lettered re- 
porters he might quote from the poets. He justly concluded that a- 
man to be eminent in his peculiar pursuit must have some ac- 
quaintance, if not with all others, at least with kindred ones. His 
taste for elegant literature, perhaps, first awakened at the university, 
was sedulously cultivated in after life. His library, judiciously se- 
lected, was the largest jn our State, and whoever listened to him^ 
was soon aware that it was not for show he accumulated books — 
to accumulate them was, indeed his passion — to love them — what 
is it but to delight in converse with the wise and with the good of 
all ages. 

Mr. Rodney appeared to- greatest advantage-— bland, gentle and 
affectionate as he was — in the bosom of his family. Too often, 
could we follow distinguished men from the public scene of their 
triumphs to the hallowed precincts of doniestic life, would we be- 
pained by witnessing the jocund laugh of infancy stilled at their ap- 
proach, fear paling the menial's brow, and tears on the cheeks of 
partners they had sworn before high heaven to love and to cherish. 
Too often the man who has inveighed, in the forum or Senate-houses 
against oppression, is the mean tyrant of his own hearth. 



Mr. Rodney possessed great conversational-talent. 

He talked much, not from ostentation, but because his mind was 
full to overflowing, and because he loved to impart pleasure. He 
was not one of those lovers of logomachy,who open their mouths only 
to do battle, nor one of those haranguers, who make mutes of all 
not as vain, selfish, and impudent as themselves. To the young 
and the diffident his manner was kind, and almost paternal, he was 
watchful to draw them out, and prompt to commend when they ac- 
rv quitted themselves w-ell. His reading was so general that he could 
instruct or amuse on many subjects, and from his share in public 
affairs, and intimate acquaintance with statesmen of his day, during 
some of the m.ost interesting periods of our history, he had a fund 
of valuable information. His anecdotes, of which he had ample 
store, were pointed, well-told, and happily introduced. Benevolence, 
unfeigned, so impregnated his discourse that it was difficult to listen 
to him and not to love him, and while listening to the wisdom and 
the wit of this fascinating companion the sands of life passed un« 
heeded, and 

^.^^^ " Day-light -would in to the lattice peep" 

^\^ " Ere night seemed well begun" — 

/ " He loved to speak not of the divine attribute of power, not of 
Jehovah when 

" Looking on the earth it qunkes" 

" Touching the mountains and they buru" 

but of God as love, pitying the infirmities of his creatures, opening 
wide his hand, and filling all things living with plenteousness, and 
spreading his protecting-wings over his children, on the land and on 

^\^ the sea. 

In 1791 Mr. Rodney, married Susan, daughter of John Hunn, 
who survived him, and they had twelve children.* 



*" Aaron Burr in a letter to his daughter Theodosia, of the 17th February 
1802, requests her to desire Dr. Edwards to give Mr. Alston a " lino to C. A. 
Rodney, a very respectable young man."— II. \ol. Davis Life of A. Burr, p. 145. 

In a letter, dated ■ to A. Burr, Mr. Rodney says " I had the pleasure of re- 
ceiving yours', of the 10th instant. The advice, you kindly give, I shall cheerfully 
follow. It has ever been my maxim to be moderate, but 'axm—maviter in modo, 
fortitcr in re"— and in a letter, dated 20th March, 1802, ho informs him— "i have 
purchased a little tract, adjoining Dr. Tiltons, which he showed you, and have cut' 
out abundant work for the season."— Ibid p. 190—102. 



He was at an early period of his life involved in \he turmoil of 
of politics, because then, as now,it was ditficult for the eminent lawyer 
to avoid being a busy politician. The political contests of that pe- 
riod were violent. Truth candor and charity were too often im- 
molated on the altar of party. It is a fact most honorable to Mr. 
Rodney that though an active and leading democrat, he numbered 
among his warmest friends some of the most distinguished federal 
leaders — for example Bayard, White, and Vining. There can be 
no stronger evidence of his great popularity than his election, in 
1802, to the House of Representatives of the United States, by a 
majority of Fifteen votes over James A. Bayard, so eminent as a 
statesman.* It appears by his letter of December the 5th 1803 
to my father, that he was then a member of the Committee of 
Ways and Means. On the 5th of December 1804 he was chosen, 
by ballot, one of the seven managers, to conduct the impeachment 
of Judge Chase, which, from the character of the accused, the 
ability it evoked, and the deep and extensive excitement of political 
feeling it caused, was invested with an importance and interest, 
which, in some measure, it still retains. What was the City of 
Washington at that day. It was a city of great pretention and 
small performance. The visitor there, for the first time, who had 
seen its magnificent plan, was astonished to find its avenues and 
streets fitted to be the thoroughfares of the busy throngs of a great 
emporium, partially opened, and bordered not by lofty edifices, but 
the stately trees of the American forest, with groups of houses, at 
wide intervals, which made it, in truth, no more than a collection, 
of villages. The President — who aflfected contempt for forms, 
which that wily leader of a great party knew full well would be 
lauded as republican simplicity — might be encountered, any day, on 
the Pennsylvania avenue, making his way through its sloughs, on 
his Virginia poney, and hitching it to a post, while he paid a visit. — 
The wings of the capitol alone were built, the gap between them 
being filled by a structure of boards, which gave the appearance of 
meanness to both. The trial of Judge Chase began on the 4th of 
February, 1805. The beautiful Senate-Chamber, which has that 
greatest merit of any work of man, suitability to its object, which 
its more imposing neighbor — the Hall of the House of Representa- 

* 2d Hildreth'8 History U. S., (2d serlea,) p. 486. 



tives — wants, was fitted up for this occasion with due regard to con- 
venience, and Sonne to effect. Aaron Burr presided, dignified and 
impartial, as was universally admitted; iiis hands red with the blood 
.of Hamilton; his dark eye as piercing, and his equnanimity as un- 
disturbed as if he had not made utter shipwreck of fortune and of 
fame. Upon his right hand and his left sat the Senators, on benches 
covered with crimson cloth. The eye of the spectator, as it glanced 
over these statesmen, elderly, grave and dignified, dwelt longest on 
the men of mark ; among them, for example, on our own Bayard; 
on John Quincy Adams, already distinguished by ability in debate, 
multifarious knowledge, and ungainly manners ; or Pickering, with 
his bald head and cue, covering, as the elder Adams afterward 
.charged,* under his puritanical garb and demeanor boundless am- 
bition; who, retiring from office as poor as he entered it, lived on a 
■ farm of a few acres, with the simplicity of Cincinnatus, and who 
has left in tjie archives at Washington proofs of his ability as Sec- 
- retary of State inferior to that of none of his successors, Webster 
excepted. The Representatives, most of them much younger men, 
were seated in front of the Senators on benches covered with green 
cloth. In front of the Representatives, on seats draped with blue 
cloth, were the Managers of the House. Among them the most 
prominent was John Randolph, whose failure on this occasion dim- 
med the splendor of his fame as a great parliamentary orator, and 
was poorly covered by the lame excuse that he had lost his notes. 
<tOn the left of the President appeared the counsel of the accused — 
Harper, working as a joiner while he gained his early education, 
.and by indomitable perseverance making his way to Nassau Hall, 
stood in the front rank of the lawyers of his country, and the states- 
v^jnen of the federal party. Lee, Attorney General of the United 
"■'^ States, set oft' his legal knowledge with the fluent speech and grace- 
\^ ) :ful action which distinguished the Virginians in the early periods 
'V^of our history ; Martin, with his profound learning and ponderous 
^reasoning, which, ehrius vel non ehrius, seldom i'ailed him ; the 
young Hopkinson, elated by his success in the courts of Pennsylvania, 
and burning with ambition of fame co-extensive with the Union, 
and already extensively known as the author of " Hail Columbia,"t 



* 2d vol. Hildreth's History U. S., (2d series,) p. 37-372. 

t 2d vol. Hildreth'8 History of U. S. States, (2d series,) p. 208. 



patriotically composed to awaken an American feeling, which 
might supplant the miserabje devotion of the two great parties of 
that day to the two great belligerents of Europe. Hail Columbia, 
though no high place can be claimed for it as a poetical composition 
carries with it so many precious recollections, that it will not, I hope, 
be consigned to obhvion when we shall boast, as assuredly we shall, 
a national song equalling or surpassing the grand lyrics of Campbell. 
In the arrangements of the Senate-Chamber for this trial the ladies 
were not forgotten. They were seated in a semi-circular gallery, 
over the benches of the Representatives, and for the most part the 
wives and daughters of the most distinguished men of the nation. 
Among them, pre-eminent for her queenly bearing, sat Mrs. Madison, 
receiving, as her due, the homage paid to her bland and graceful 
manners rather than to her position as wife of the Secretary of 
State. No Senator, I am sure, looked reprovingly upon these fair 
ones, if in parts of this solemn trial, which they could not under- 
stand, and would not have relished, if they could, their eyes wan- 
dered to the box of the foreign ministers and their young attaches, glit- 
tering with orders and embroidery. But the object of absorbing 
interest was the accused. Proclamation was made that Samuel 
Chase appear and answer the articles of impeachment exhibited 
against him. When that old man, eloquent, addressed the Court de- 
nying most of the acts imputed to him, asserting the legality of those 
he admitted, and denying the improper motives with which the acts 
charged were alledged to have been done, who could forget that the 
sonorous voice which filled the Senate-chamber, first raised in op- 
position to the stamp-act, had through the whole period of the rev- 
olution, stirred his fellow-citizens, in the legislature of his native 
State, in their primary assemblies, and in the halls of Congress, to 
resist, unto death the arbitrary acts of the mother-country; who could 
forget that some of the ablest of the great State-papeis of that Con- 
gress were from his pen; and above all who could forget that his 
name was signed to that immortal instrument, which proclaimed to 
the world that the United States, free, sovereign, and independent, 
had taken her place among the nations of the earth. Judge Chase 
was declared guilty of only three articles of the impeachment by a 
bare majority, unanimously ^icquitted of one, and found guilty of 
none, by a vote of two thirds, and, of course, pronounced acquitted 

2* 



10 

(rfall — and, 1 think, justly, though his ardent attachment to great 
principles of government, he thought endangered by factious vio- 
lence, led him to touch, in his charges, on topics, forbidden by sound 
policy to the Judge, and concious of great ability, and by nature 
overbearing, he, perhaps, exhibited on the bench somewhat of the 
passion and hauteur, said to have characterized many of the colonial 
judges.* "Mr. Rodney displayed such ability and legal knowledge, as 
one of the managers of this impeachment as greatly augmented his 
reputation. In 1804,three of the four judges of the Supreme Court of 
Pennsylvania were impeached for their (alledged) unlawful com - 
mitment for contempt of one of the parties in a libel suit pending in 
their court. In 1 805 Mr. Rodney was employed to conduct this 
impeachment, which resulted in the acquittal of the accused. (2d 
vol. Hildreth's History of the United States (2d series,)p.p. 514, 552.) ,^ 

he federal party having regained its ascendency in Delaware, 
he was not re-elected to the United States House of Representatives, 
but in 1807,he was appointed Attorney General of the United States, 
and held this office for four years. ' The Attorney General was not 
a cabinet-officer until 1814; but though not a member of the cabinet, 
from his high place in the friendship and confidence of Jefierson and 
Madison he shared, I have no doubt, in the anxieties and counsels 
of that momentous period, when our country, constantly on the verge 
of war with the belligerents, who plundered her commerce, was 
brought to the brink of disunion by internal dissensions. I know of 
but one of his opinions as Attorney General, that has been question- 
ed; that one, under which Mr. Jefferson, applying to the case a ter- 
ritorial law, ousted Edward Livingston from the batture, and his 
opinion must have been required on many nice and difficult questions 
which arose under the embargo and non-importation laws. In Feb- 
ruary, 1807, in the cases of Bollman and Swartwout, brought by 
Habeus Corpus, before the United States Supreme Court, on the 
questions whether they should be discharged or held for trial, and, 
if held, conlinedor bailed, Mr. Rodney, as Attorney General of the 
United States, appeared and made an able argument, the Court de- 
ciding that the accused should be discharged for want of probable 
cause for supposing them guilty — 1st vol. Burr's Trial, p. 21 to p. 
30. In 1807 the mysterious movements of Aaron Burr induced his 

* 2d Yol. Hildreth's History of U. S. (second series,) p. 514 



ii 

arrest on the Tombigbee, on the charge of treason, and his removal 
to Richmond, Virginia, where he arrived on the 26th of March, and 
on the 30th of that month, was transferred by his military escort to 
the civil authority and brought before Chief Justice Marshall lor 
examination. In his trials in August and September of that year, 
on indictments for treason and misdemeanor, Mr. Rodney did not 
participate. Upon the motion that he should be committed to take 
his trial on the charges of misdemeanor, in setting on foot a military 
expedition against the dominions of the King of Spain, and of trea- 
son, in levying war against the United States, Mr. Rodney, as At- 
torney General argued in support of this motion. His speech is 
not given at large, but imperfectly by the reporter, from his own 
recollections, and information from others. (Burr's Trial, Preface.) 
But with these disadvantages it exhibits legal knowledge and ability 
equal to the requirements of a case so important, in which it was 
his painful duty to appear against an individual so distinguished, and 
who, he remarked, was once his friend, and received in his house as 
such. (1st Burr's Trial, pages 1,8,9, 10, 20.) I have been inform- 
ed by a member of his family that he went to Richmond to take 
part in the preliminary proceedings in the case, but had little share 
in them, having been prostrated by an attack of yellow fever, soon 
after his arrival there. 

Archibald Hamilton Rowan, then an exile from Ireland, for politi- 
cal opinionsjfor which he had been prosecuted and convicted,though 
ably defended by Curran in the most eloquent of his speeches, had 
been the guest of Mr. Rodney, having been a resident for a short 
time in Wilmington, or its vicinity. The intercourse between 
Rowan — highly educated and refined — and Mr. Rodney, under cir- 
cumstances that excited his warmest sympathy, soon ripened into 
friendship. As soon as he heard of Mr. Rodney's illness this warm- 
hearted Irishman travelled, on horseback, to Richmond, to minister 
to his friend, in a disease,of the most malignant character, then gen- 
erally believed to be contageous, and which has too often scared from 
the bed-sides of its victims their nearest relatives and their dearest 
friends. The Irishman has his faults — no son of Adam is without 
them — but was he ever found ungrateful? The following anecdote 
I may be pardoned for recounting, upon the same authority as the 
preceding one, because it illustrates a trial of Mr. Rodney's char- 



H) 




12 

acter, his antipathy to titles, of all sorts,, and his scorn of the fond- 
ness of some of his countrymen for such distinctions, so inconsist- 
ent with their professed opinions : 

Soon after he had taken lodgings at a hotel in Richmond, one of 
its waiters (a sable one, of course,) addressing him, said, " Major, 
will you please come to supper." " I am no Major," answered Mr. 
Rodney. " Colonel," replied the black, " please to come." " I am 
no Colonel," said Mr. Rodney, much amused with his pertinacity. 
The waiter then retreated, but quickly returned, and addressing 
him, with ten fold formality and respect, said, " General, be so good 
as to walk down to supper." " My friend," replied Mr. Rodney,- 
" I am not a General." " You are," presisted the waiter, " for' 1 
heard men say in the bar-room, that you are the ' Eternal Gene- 
ral.' "V Office subjected Mr. Rodney, as it has most of our public 
men, to great pecuniary loss. In a letter to my father, from Wash- 
ington, dated July 20th,1807, soon after the attack of the Leopard 
upon the Chesapeake, he says "I have been detained here, my dear 
friend, much longer than I contemplated, by events as unexpected as 
L they are unexampled. It is very uncertain when I shall get a furlough 
from head-quarters, though I never was so anxious to see home, be- 
cause I came here unprepared for a summer's residence, after having 
spent the winter at this place. It is extremely inconveninent to me, 
at this time, to abandon, as it were, my family, and my business at 
the Court, for I stand in need of the profits of every term, but at 
such a crisis there is no personal sacrifice I would not make rather 
\. than desert my post in a perilous season."'" He adds^ the '"Tri- 
/^umph' and ' Bellona,' each of 74 guns still remain in the Chesapeake. 
In a short time Captain Decatur will give a good account of them. 
He has eight gun-boats complete, and in a few days hewill have 
/^ eight more. With this flotilla, on a calm day, he could attack and 
O' sink seventy fours." From which paragraph I infer that Mr. Rod- 
ney was a believer in one of Thomas Jefferson's hobbies and falla- 
"V^jcies — the gun-boat system. In 1811 he resigned the office of 
Attorney General of the United States, probably, from prudential 
considerations, which the claims of his large family would no longer 
suffer him to disregard. 

He returned to the practice of the law, in Wilmington, and must 
have vividly enjoyed the transition from the toils and disquietude of 
©ffice to the tl-anquility of his happy home. 



13 

As soon as the war of 1812 was declared, he was elected Cap- 
tain of a company of artillery. Beloved by his men, as he was in 
every situation, he was a good officer, and commanded them 
through that war. They volunteered their services to the United 
States — were accepted, discharged garrison- duty, for some time, 
and were encamped, for a season, being part of a body of four 
hundred men.who marched from Delaware, to aid in the defense of 
Baltimore, but were arrested before reaching it, by intelligence 
that they were not needed. v,^^ 

Careless as Mr. Rodney was of dress, his coats always having --^ 
been of the cut ludicrously, but aptly, termed the shad-helhj, his 
military equipment may have shocked a martinet, but if his ar- r 
tillery jacket was sometimes buttoned awry, it covered as brave KJ 
and patriotic a heart as ever beat beneath a uniform. -^"^ 

Mr. Rodney was a member of "Washington Lodge, Wilming- 
ton, and was elected Seinor Warden of the Grand Lodge of Dela- 
ware on the 24th of June, I8l2. 

The citizens of the United States were, from mingled motives of 
benevolence and interest, anxious spectators, during the long civil 
war between Spain and her South American colonies of that con* 
test. The colonial policy of the great commercial nations of Eu- 
rope has disgraced them by its selfishness and rapacity, and that of 
Spain especially. The agriculture and manufactures of her colo- 
nists were subjected to restraints almost incredible ; for example, 
the cultivation of the olive and the vine was forbidden, in districts 
well suited to them. The commerce of the Spanish colonies was 
restricted' to Spanish bottoms, and though never granted to exclu- 
sive companies, yet being confined to a single port (first Sevil and 
then Cadiz,) falling into a few hands, was in effect a monopoly. Even- 
intercourse between her provinces was only partially permitted. 
Education was not fostered, and was confined to latin, scholastic plji- 
rosophy,and jurisprudence,civil and ecclesiastical. The Creoles were 
excluded from all offices but municipal ones ; there was among 
them no liberty of conscience, no freedom of the press, no habeas 
corpus, no trial by jury, no share in legislation, and no books but 
those admitted by government censors. The king of Spain, not 
the Spanish nation, was the owner of these colonies, by virtue of a. 
papal grant, the bull of Alexander the Vlth. His will was law. — 



14 

Foreign vessels were excluded from his colonies, and intercourse 
with them punishable with death ; and when he relaxed this rule, 
as on a few occasions he did, it was for brief periods. But though 
he could shut out legitimate trade, and though he treated intrud- 
ing foreigners, who fell into his power, with exceeding cruelty, he 
could not exclude the smuggler. It was, too, part of his narrow 
system to make this vast region a sealed book to all except Spain. 
But her own writers had delighted and astonished the world with 
narratives of the conquest of South America, and accounts of its 
climate, its geography, its productions and aboriginal inhabitants, 
truthful in general, but with the coloring of romance, and very far 
from possessing the 'accuracy of such works of our time. The 
royal license, but at recent periods, had opened South America to 
enterprising and intelligent travelers; for example, in 1790, to 
Alexander Von Humboldt, the result of whose journeys was given 
to the world in 12 volumes, illustrated with maps and drawings, a 
work for extent, value and accuracy of infformation unparalleled. 
Our trade with South America since 1810 had greatly augmented 
our knowledge of this region. In 1S17 a large party of our citi- 
zens had become impatient for the acknowledgement by our gov- 
vernment of the South America Republics. Calm and reilecting 
men in the minority, as they have ever been, doubted whether their 
citizens, misgoverned for centuries, could, in the brief period they 
had been left to their own guidance, have gained the knowledge 
and love of true political principles necessary to establish and main- 
tain free and independent governments. To solve this doubt Mr. 
Monroe instituted the mission to South America, of which Mr. 
Rodney was the head. This appointment was most gratifying — 
true the duty it devolvedupon him was arduous, separation from his 
family, was in prospect, the perils and privation of a protracted sea- 
voyage, and sojourn in a land of various climates, were before him, 
but the trust was most honorable, for he was to leave his coun- 
try, not on an ordinary errand of diplomacy, but to solve the mo- 
mentous problem whether millions of his fellow men deserved or 
not to be recognized by the United States among the independent 
nations of the earth. In July the Commissioners proceeded to New 
York, to embark in the Ontario, but their sailing was delayed by 
the illness and death of Mr. Rodney's second son, a midshipman of 



15 

that vessel, and they finally declined taking passage in her, consid- 
ering her accommodations inadequate. They sailed on the 4th of 
December 1817, in the frigate Congress, Commodore Sinclair, from 
Hampton Roads. In that little world — a ship of war — there was^^^ 
much to interest, and instruct. He had been, for the recovery of /■ 
impaired health, a voyager in early life, and ever after was an ar- Lx 
dent admirer of our hardy mariners, and their floating abodes.—-/^ 
There is, perhaps, no object which awakens so many associations, 
dear to the phylanthropist and the patriot, as that miracle of art, a 
ship. While she equalizes the distribution nature has made of her 
bounties among nations, she is the winged messenger who diffuses 
the precious light of knowledge among millions who sit in darkness 
and the shadow of death. We think, as we look upon her, anchored 
in some placid bay, in the language of Campbell, "of her days of 
toil, and her nights of danger." Every American must rem.em- 
ber how often she has proudly borne the flag of his country aloft 
in the hour of battle,and the halo of undying glory with which she has 
encircled our name.In this voyage Mr.Rodney's powder to attract and 
attach was soon manifested. Often in the delicious nights, peculiar to 
the tropics, while the gallant frigate glided tin'ough the ocean, which 
reflected the orbs that shone in glory above her, but among which 
no star of home sparkled, and the gleeful laugh of the frank hearted 
sailor alone broke the stillness, did the officers of the Congress 
find in his conversation a delightful relief from the ennui of a sea- 
voyage. Alas! many of these young men — then so full of tatent, 
and courage, and hopej — with Sinclair, and Graham, and Bland, and 
Baldwin * — have long since been numbered with the dead. Hav- 
ing touched at Rio de Janeiro, the Commissioners arrived after a 
prosperous voyage, at Montevideo, from which place, the Congress 
having too great draught of water to ascend the La Plata further, 
they proceeded, in a small brig, "the Malacabada," or "Unfinished," 
by name, as ill-found and dirty a craft as ever sailed, to Buenos 
Ayres, where they ai rived on the 28th of February, 1818, landing 
so unexpectedly as to defeat the public reception, with which it was 
intended to honor them. The "United Provinces of La Plata," or 
the "Argentine Republic" then comprised about two thirds of the 

* Surgeon of the Congress — a native ofWilmingtou, Delaware, and eminent as 
a botanist. H. M. Brackenrige, the able and accomplished Secretary of the MiS' 
sion, afterwards a member of the U. S- ficusc of Representatives, survires. 



16 

viceroyalty of Buenos Ayrcs, the area of which was about one 
million five hundred thousand square miles. Watered by the grand 
La Plata and its affluents, and other rivers, its fertile soil teemed 
with the productions of the temperate and torid zones. The heroic 
and successful repulses of the attacks of Sir Home Popham, in ISOfi 
and of General Whitclock, in 1807, taught the inhabitants of this 
viceroyalty their strength, and the war consequent upon the over- 
throw of the ancient government of Spain by Napoleon so engrossed 
the parent country that she abandoned, as it seemed, her colonies, 
and the Argentine provinces, as much from necessity as choice as- 
sumed and exercised, in 1810, the powers of self-government, vir- 
tually independent from that year, though their independence was 
not formally declared till 1816. From 1810 almost till the arrival 
of our Commissioners they had been distracted by war with the 
old Spaniards, who, occupying, with armies from Peru, the upper 
country of the La Plata, and stained by great cruelties, strove to 
restore the despotism of the mother country. This war was sue • 
.ceeded and accompained by contests, too often sanguinary, between 
two great parties of the revolutionists, one in favor of a consoli- 
dated government, adapted to the changed state of their affairs, with 
a chief magistrate, much like the old viceroys, the other advocat- 
ing a confederacy of these provinces, like that of the United States. 
There were, besides, the disturbing elements of ambition and cupid- 
ity, in unprincipled men, and intense jealousy in the other provinces 
of the ascendancy and leadership of Buenos Ayres, to which, though 
it may have been unduly claimed and attained, her superior intelli- 
gence, wealth and sacrifices for the common cause gave her pre- 
tensions, plausible at least. But on the 3rd of December, 1817, a 
general Congress of these provinces, at first nine, then fourteen, (the 
additional provinces being created out of the original ones,) enacted, 
atBuenas Ayres, a Provisional Regulation, to be in force till a con- 
stitution should be adopted. This Regulation provided for the elec- 
tion of a Congress, and invested it with supreme legislative power, 
under wise restraints, with power to appoint a chief magistrate, to 
be styled Supreme Director. This provisional instrument, with 
great defects, has many good enactments, but is blemished by 
a pedantic declaration of rights and duties, which American consti- 
.tution-makcrs take for granted none can question and therefore 



17 

never insert. The Commissioners found this provisional government 
subsisting, Don Manuel Puerreydon Director, and the country 
tranquil, with the appearance, at least, of stability. Their reception 
by this officer v^^as, in Mr. Rodney's words, "kind and flattering 
and they received from every citizen a cordial welcome." Many 
were the novel and interesting objects presented by Buenos Ayres 
to the Commissioners — her regular and spacious streets, the Moor- 
ish style of architecture of her houses, her noble plaza, her stately 
cathedral and churchs, with their gorgeous worship, her theatre 
and bull-fights, her salubrious climate, indicated by her name, the 
brilliant eyes and graceful carriage of her ladies, their sallow com- 
plexions, bad teeth, and cigarros, and the viaticum, born by a priest, 
seated in a gilded chariot, drawn by white mules, with a guard of 
black soldiers. Great was the embarrassment of Protestant foreign- 
ers when they encountered the host; they avoided, usually, shocking 
the religious feelings of the people not ( as Gen. Wilkinson is said 
once to have done) by kneeling, which in them would have been 
idolatrous conformity, but by turning a corner or taking refuge in a 
store. Who has not heard or read of the mighty pampa stretching 
from Buenos Ayres, for a thousand miles, to the Andes, without hill 
or tree, or house, except the occasional hut of the herdsman, depress- 
ing the traveler with the painful sense of utter loneliness, and in its ap- 
parently endless undulations of verdure, well likened to the long but 
low swells of a great sea, arrested, in an instant, by the fiat of Om- 
nipotence, and fixed forever. Every facility in their power was 
given by the director and his officials to the Commissioners in col- 
lecting the information, for which they had been sent forth by their 
government, and as a mark of very great respect, on their interces- 
sion, a soldier, under sentence of death for insubordination, was 
pardoned.* It would have been in character for some of the Roman 
emperors to have treated an ambassador they especially desired to 
honor, with a slaughter of gladiators. As if to give eclat to the 
departure of the commissions and their arrival in the United States, 
on the eve of their leaving Buenos Ayres was received intelligence 
of the decisive battle and victory of Maypu won by its liberating 
army, under San Martin, which secured the independence of Chili- 
The Commissioners narrowly escaping shipwreck from a pampero, 

♦Nile's Register, vol. 14, p. 326- 

3* 



18 

in the port of Maldonado, near the mouth of the La Plata, where 
the Congress had anchored, to receive bullocks, and calling at St. 
Salvadore and Margaretta, arrived at Norfolk, after a favorable 
y' passage, in July 1818. Mr. Rodney's Report communicated to 
Congress in November of that year, is an able paper, and increased 
his reputation. Mr. Graham made a separate Report, as did Judge 
Bland, who with a spirit, honorable to him, proceeded, over land, 
from Buenos Ayres to Chili, as the instructions of the Commission- 
ers authorized one or more of them to do. Their reports presented 
the Argentine Republic in less favorable aspect than did Mr. Rod- 
ney's, and they were less sanguine in their expectations of the suc- 
cess of the South Americans in their experiments in self-governmet, 
but this difference of their views afforded their countrymen better 
V means for arriving at just conclusions than if they had coincided. 
> In 1820 Mr. Rodney was a second time elected to the United 
■'. ^ States House of Representatives, and received a respectable vote 
\yfor the Speakership of that body,' and in 1822 was elected by the 
Legislature of Delaware to the Senate of United States, being the 
first of his party who had received this distinction as he was the first 
democrat chosen to the House of Representatives. 

In 1822 it was resolved by Congress that the "United Provinces 
of La Plata'* ought to be acknowledged by the United States, and in 
1823 Mr. Rodney was appointed Minister Plenipotentiary to their 
government. The United States had the honor of preceding Mr. 
Canning in his recognition of the South American republics, one of 
the three measures on which he rested his fame as a statesman, and 
which was received with a burst of approbation from every quarter 
of Great Britain. The frigate Congress, Commodore Biddle, was or- 
dered to carry Mr. Rodney and his family to Buenos Ayres. They 
were conveyed by a steamer to this ship, at anchor, near the mouth 
of the Christiana; an elegant dinner having been given him, a few 
days previous to his embarkation, by citizens of Wilmington and its 
vicinity, in testimony of their respect and esteem for him, at which 
were present Commodore Biddle, and Hugh Nelson, Minister to 
Spain, who was to be landed from the Congress at Cadiz. The 
Congress sailed from the Delaware on the 8th of June, 1823, with 
a fair wind, and arrived, without accident, at Cadiz, from which 
port, having landed Mr. Nelson, she sailed on the 3r(J of August. — 



19 

f: \ 

While the friends of Mr. Rodney, their hopes that a sea-voyag« ^ 
would renovate his declining health scarcely predominating over their 
fears that they would see him no more, looked anxiously for news of 
his progress, they were astonished by intelligence that by reason of 
unkind and discourteous treatment, experienced from Commodore 
Biddle, he had left, with his family, the Congress, at Rio de Janerio, 
and taken passage, in a merchant vessel, for Buenos Ayres. Deep 
indignation was excited, and expressed. Commodore Biddle was 
assailed in the newspapers, and defended, with little judgement, 
which was his misfortue, not his fault, much stress being laid on his 
sacrifice of his own comfort to that of his passengers, and on the 
unreasonable extent of which Mr. Rodney had encumbered his ship 
with his furniture, the homely character ofwhich was sneered at.-^ 
He was even reproached for lumbering the Congress with agricul- 
tural implements, which he had taken with him for the honor of our 
mechanics and the benefit of the Buenos Ayreans. The Legisla- 
ture of Delaware, January 1st, 1824^ by resolution, unanimously 
adopted, requested their members of Congress to use their best el- 
forts to have an inquiry instituted as to the misconduct of Commo- 
dore Biddle. This proceeding would have been more in accordance 
with justice, and much more effective if, instead of assuming, on 
exparte evidence, as it did, the guilt of the accused, it had alledged, 
as was true, that there was ground for inquiry. In a biographical 
sketch of Mr. Rodney this occurrence could not, without injustice 
to his memory, be omitted, but it is with regret I mention it. I 
would do no wrong to the memory of an accomplished gentleman 
and gallant officer, and therefore from what appeared to be the facts 
of the case state it thus. Mr. Rodney was careless of forms to a 
fault, and the discomfort from having ladies and many children pas- 
sengers was great, and his effects encumbered the frigate, and the 
Commodore, a strict disciplinarian, was fond of having things ship- 
shape, and, withal, of irritable temperament, while his passengers .-^ 
may have been too sensitive. This view palliates, but does not, in 
my opinion, justify the conduct of Commodore Biddle to a distin- 
guished citizen, in feeble health, to ladies, and to children, in some 
sense, his guests, the character of which may be inferred from the 
fact that Mr. Rodney left the Congress, a thousand miles short of 
his destination, which he could not have done without great incon- 



20 

venience and expense. The death of Mr. Rodney and absence of 
Commodore Biddle delayed the inquiry, and the public mind be- 
ing soon occupied by newer occurrences, though asked, it was not 
pressed, and there was no further proceeding in this case. Let us 
not forget that Biddle shared with Jones in the capture of the Frolic, 
was the captor of of the Penguin, and by masterly seamanship saved 
the Hornet from capture, by a British 74, so close to him, at times, 
during the chase, as to throw her shot on his deck. His grand- 
mother, when a British officer, tauntingly, said to her, in 1775, "the 
Ameaicans should not make war, for they could find none to lead 
them," replied, "she had seven sons, whom, if necessary, she would 
lead, herself, against their oppressors." Two of these sons fell in 
the war of our revolution* — one being blown up, in command of the 
Randolph frigate, and an officer of great promise, with his crew of 
three hundred men, while attacking, with courage bordering on rash- 
ness, the Yormouth British man-of-war, of 64 guns. 

Mr. Rodney presented his credentials as Minister Plenipotentiary 
from the United States on the 27th of December, 1823, to the gov- 
ernor ot Buenos Ayres, who exercised, under the constitution of the 
Argentine Republic, adopted May 25th, 1819, the function of its 
Chief Magistrate. Addresses were delivered by both, and the recep- 
tion was cordial and imposing. 

The hopes, which Mr. Rodney shared with a great majority of 
his countrymen, that the South Americans would prove their capabil- 
ity for self-government have proved delusive. Revolutions, their his- 
tory traced in]characters of blood, have succeeded revolutions, in their 
beautiful country, military despotisms having been overthrown only 
that others should be erected in their stead. "Liberty" — exclaimed 
the lovely Madam Roland, as her ruthless murderers hurried her to 
the scaffold — "Liberty what crimes have been perpetrated in thy 
name !" I add — what follies, too, and of these none greater than 
political institutions in advance of the intelligence of a nation. 

Mr. Rodcey's health gradually declined, and on the 10th of June, 
1824, at 6 o'clock, A. M., he died tranquilly, surrounded by his fam- 
ily. The Americans in Buenos Ayres immediately met, and passed 
resolutions appropriate to this mournful event. The government 
decreed that a sepulchral monument, to receive Mr. Rodney's re- 

* Letter of Charles Biddle to A. Burr, Vol. 2d, Davitr. Life of Burr, p. 235. 



21 

mains, should be erected, at the public expense. He was interred 
in the English cemetery, followed by his children, his countrymen, 
then in Buenos Ayres, and many of its citizens, preceded by the 
officers, civil and military, of the Argentine Republic, its flag, with 
that of the United States, enshrouding the corpse, which was escorted 
by a military guard of honor, and minute guns, during the ceremo- 
nials, were fired from the fort, and at its close a volley from the 
battalion, which formed the escort. All vied in condolence with 
the bereaved family, and in rendering them kind offices. 

On the margin of the pampa, extending, in its granduer, from the 
La Plata to the Andes, moulder, among strangers, the remains of 
CiESAR AUGUSTUS RODNEY. I reiterate the wish, and the 
hope, before expressed in this Hall, that, by the act of his masonic 
Brethren, they may have their final resting place in Wilmington, be- 
neath a monument, worthy his abilities, his virtues, and his public 
services. 

Non sibi sed patrics vixit. 



